Things, May

I’m still obsessing over tea. Lemony, minty, hints of berry floating in there, green with lemon, black citrus, mint mint mint. I want it all. I don’t care if it is 80 degrees outside, my office is freezing and I will clutch a hot cup of tea all day long and listen to my wedding ring clink clink clinking against it and be happy.

I get to go to lunch with along lost high school acquaintance today. On my second day in the office I ran into her in the hallway. I guess this is what happens when you move home and get a job. I came from a place where, even though I had been living and working and schooling for almost ten years, I wouldn’t even dream of running into someone I knew at work. I guess I wouldn’t dream of it here either, but it’s not such a shocker when I think about it. So now I get to catch up with someone I always admired in high school. She was one of the no drama ladies, I always felt like she was above the bullshit. In high school it was nice to know people like that. And now I get to have lunch with her as a grown up. Magical how the world works.

I don’t understand how anyone could hate the weather here. I am drunk with it every single day. When it rains it is the greatest rain and when it is sunny it is the greatest sun. The trees all have big fat leaves and the breeze is the best and the sparkling water is amazing, and it is real spring with real summer around the corner and then a real fall, followed by a real winter. California has its weather perks, but give me some moody seasons any day. I am home.

In the Bay Area the only birds I really remember hearing were the crows and the seagulls around the city dump. That sounds bad, California is filled with lots and lots of wild life, and it is beautiful. But around our apartment the only birds that I ever really heard were crows. I had totally forgotten how loud the birds are in the Pacific Northwest. If we have our window open I am woken up by a myriad of bird calls at 4-430am. I’m not going to say it isn’t annoying. It is kind of annoying. I also just couldn’t believe I had forgotten this part about Seattle. It sounds maybe stupid, but I feel like this is how the earth is supposed to be? With seasons and nature and people and trees and flowers and bugs and all of that business kind of all swirled up together. Why weren’t the birds singing in San Mateo? It’s probably just a species thing, but somehow it just feels bigger than that.

So I’ve been having a pretty silent existential crisis lately. I worry it is going to sound dumb because it seems so DRAMATIC when I talk about it or type it out loud. But lately I have felt so incredibly small. Not like I have self esteem issues, or that I am not feeling heard in my world – I mean in regards to the universe. I’m so small! We are all so small! And then I was thinking about Shakespeare and how he died 500 years ago, and how there a lot a lot a lot a lot of people who all lived and died within those 500 years and we really remember maybe, like, 100 of those people for any notable things. Everyone else, all of those people, we just … forget. They lived and died and voila. And then I started thinking about how final death is, and that freaked me out. How short life is, in comparison. Then that, of course, lead to the age old question of, “Then what is any of this for?? Why do we spend so much time working on being better people and creating beautiful things, and so on and so forth if it all just… ends eventually?” And then from there it all spirals into the, “is this even real? what’s real? is this chair real?” conversation and that’s when my brain explodes into a million pieces of confetti.

Monday morning I spent at the doctor getting a physical and a pap. I have been patting myself on the back for actually handling that ish for the whole week. Look at me! Being all adult! Taking care of things! Checking them off my “adult to do list.” Having a kid is like playing the sims. It’s no longer just me, scheduling haircuts and dentist appointments whenever I can and if it goes a little longer than it should, oh well. Now it’s me + Kamel + the baby. And if the baby doesn’t go to the doctor when he is supposed to, then I am not just lazy, I immediately turn into a bad parent as well. It’s like Cinderella and the pumpkin. Poof. But it’s hard! Because we are still new to caring for another creature, so a few weeks ago I scheduled Gabe’s first dentist visit and I have been congratulating myself for that ever since. Yeah, that’s right! Who’s on that shit? We are! That’s who!

6 thoughts on “Things, May”

I feel you so hard on the existential crisis. Mostly now I just lean into it, because I find it sort of comforting that actually none of this means anything, but did it ever take a long time to get there.

First, we’re trying to figure out if we want to move out of LA by the end of the year, and you’re making a pretty compelling case for the Pacific Northwest.

Second, that same existential crisis hits me sometimes too! Or some variation on it involving mortality and general agghlbhghgh. Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” especially makes me lose my damn mind, though I’m not entirely sure whether it’s in a scary way or a good way. 🙂

You know what I think is kind of weird? Sometimes I ponder the whole “what do I even mean in this universe” line of thinking, and I find it kind of… freeing. Like, my responsibility and priority is to focus on what I’m doing now, to make the best of my moments here on earth and to really enjoy it while it lasts.

Also, i have some new tea to try this afternoon – Pomegranate Oolong and Serene Caribe (which is apparently a blend of green and black teas, guava and strawberry)… and they come in a “single silken sachet” so i feel fancy.

Oh my goodness, I am WITH YOU on the existential crisis thing. I always feel breathlessly terrified when I think about how before I was born I had no thoughts and after I die I will go back to having no thoughts and no brain and will not even know I’m dead and this was all just a blip on the radar of the humanity, not to mention the Earth of which humanity is just a blip, not to mention the universe. And so on. I also think about what a crazy series of things had to happen for me to even come into consciousness in this world and it’s all so bizarre and sometimes I think creatures were never meant to have this kind of self-awareness because we have just enough to understand how small we are but not enough to understand this big crazy complex universe. And just like you, it always ends in, “AM I EVEN REAL?? WHAT IS REALITY? DOES ANYTHING EXIST OUTSIDE MY PERCEPTIONS?”

Then it becomes too much and I go back to deciding what to eat for dinner or whatever.

Also, I really miss the Sims. Once upon a time, whole days of my life were consumed with that amazing, addictive game.

So impressed with the dentist appointment! When Z turned one, I called a few places around here (2?) and both shrugged off such an early appointment, though I could’ve swore I read somewhere to get a visit in before they turn two. One place was like eh, not until preschool-ish-age. I’m not that sad about it because we are TERRIBLE about consistently brushing his teeth at night, but maybe that’s why I’d like to have the professionals check in on him (even though I know the actual visit will go horribly).